Usain Bolt turns cheerleader for Jamaica’s netball team during the game against New Zealand at the Commonwealth Games. Photograph: Art Widak/Demotix/Corbis

Well, that’s let the cat out of the bag. Usain Bolt, in an unguarded moment, has reportedly let slip that he thinks the Commonwealth Games are “a bit shit”, and that the “Olympics are better”. Perhaps he was entirely misquoted, or utterly unaware that he was talking to a journalist. The man is surely too smart, too PR savvy, to have knowingly made such remarks on the record, which is why he wisely chose not to offer an opinion on the situation in Gaza when he was asked about it on Saturday.

Three thoughts occur. The first is that it is a shame, if entirely understandable, that if he really does feel that way he cannot come out and explain why. He might even find some sympathy for his views, given that he is, by all reports, spending most of his time holed up in his tiny room at the athletes’ village because he knows that whenever he goes outside he will be pestered by people seeking photographs and, yes, journalists seeking stories. But he has a brand to protect, and sponsors to satisfy. Virgin Media, who reportedly pay Bolt £2m for his services, are also the “Presenting Partner of athletics” at the Commonwealth Games. You can see their logo on the back of the starting blocks at the athletics events.

The second is that whether he said it or not there is nothing wrong with a little criticism. It is, if nothing else, a tonic to the coverage provided by the BBC, who are so very keen to justify their enormous investment in the Games. In 2009 Ben Bradshaw MP, then the secretary for culture, media and sport, recommended that the Games should be dropped from the crown jewels list of protected sporting events that should be shown on free-to-air TV. That in itself could be considered symptomatic of their diminished standing, though it did not happen. At the time the Games organisers explained that the decision would leave them with a £20m hole in their budget, since that was the value they placed on the domestic TV rights. The BBC said it was a “multimillion pound agreement”. That, of course, is before you factor in the costs of providing blanket coverage across TV, internet and radio.

Third, and most pertinent, is that if Bolt really does think these Games are “a bit shit”, he should have seen the 2010 edition in Delhi. He was one of a number of athletes who did not go, along with Jess Ennis, Chris Hoy, Christine Ohuruogu, David Rudisha and a host of others. In the blue riband event, the men’s 100m, not one of the 11 fastest athletes in the Commonwealth that year bothered to turn up. (Pop quiz: can you name the 2010 Commonwealth Games 100m champion? The answer is Jamaica’s Lerone Clarke. His winning time was 10.12sec, the slowest since Don Quarrie won in 10.38sec in 1974.)

Despite it all, there were still some highlights. Like the memorable night when 60,000 fans turned up to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium to cheer on the India women’s 4x400m team. They won gold, and, as Seb Coe said at the time it felt like “the moment that could change the course of athletics in Asia, the moment that could inspire thousands of people who’d never even seen an athletics track before to get involved”. A year later, three of them were banned after they failed drugs tests.

One of the main legacies has been a four-year-long investigation into alleged corruption by city officials, which is still ongoing. The 2010 Games were, without doubt, one of the single sorriest sporting events I’ve covered for the Guardian in a career that has also included a pig-racing contest in Dorset, and the World Indoor Bowls Championships at Potters Leisure Centre, five miles outside Lowestoft. Even the BBC conceded that it was not exactly appointment television.

The blunt truth is that, whether Bolt said it or not, the Commonwealth Games do sometimes seem, in a very British way, “a bit shit”, as anyone who has just paid £7.50 for a cheeseburger during a wet morning at the lawn bowls preliminaries might admit. In a little skit on his HBO show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver described them as an “off Broadway Olympics”. Yet, for everyone willing to suspend their scepticism, the last week has also been utterly glorious, a success simply because of the enthusiasm and excitement felt by thousands of Glaswegians who have filled every venue here, from the squash at Scotstoun to the rugby sevens at Ibrox to the morning sessions of the athletics at Hampden. “People make Glasgow” is one of the slogans the city has been using. They make the Games too. And on those grounds alone, these ones have been a lot of fun, better, for sure, than the Delhi edition. Not that Bolt would know it.